COLLEGES : Hillock Is on the Loyola Hot Seat

New Loyola Marymount head basketball Coach Jay Hillock, who spent four years as head coach at Gonzaga, used to coach against Loyola. When he was hired along with Paul Westhead five years ago, Hillock says, Loyola was a “sleepy little campus by the beach.”

But all that changed. Hillock, who was Westhead’s top assistant, helped the Lions rocket into basketball consciousness with a high-speed pinball style that rattled conventional ideas of the sport.

Hillock was in the background as players such as Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble became All-Americans, and Westhead something of a marquee name, at least in basketball circles. The media found Westhead and his players irresistible.

Westhead was hired last week as coach of the Denver Nuggets. Hillock, at a press conference on Monday announcing that he would replace Westhead as coach, said: “When Loyola Marymount hired Paul Westhead, they got much more than they expected. He was Loyola’s foremost ambassador of goodwill--exactly what this sleepy little campus needed. He was not a shot in the arm, but a nuclear explosion.”

Hillock’s challenge of replacing Westhead is twofold: to maintain a successful basketball program and to remake his image with the players from assistant coach to head coach. He did that successfully at Gonzaga, but he wasn’t replacing a guy who once led the Lakers to an NBA title.

“Your approach has to be a little different,” Hillock said. “The assistant’s kind of a friend. The head coach is ultimately more accountable--the head coach is on the other side of the desk.”

Hillock has the players’ backing. When the Nuggets announced Westhead’s hiring, the Loyola players rallied behind Hillock.

“It could be a problem if the players view him as an assistant,” a former Loyola player said. “But Coach Hillock should be all right. They respect him.”

The other part of the equation--maintaining a high profile--could be more problematic, if Loyola views that as a goal. Westhead combined his NBA background and radical style with a glibness and ease with the media that few coaches possess. Although he said he had no sense of it, he had become a celebrity. His name and connections attracted players, notably transfers Gathers, Kimble and Corey Gaines, who helped turn the Lions into a Top 20 team.

Westhead’s name and Loyola’s success helped the coaching staff attract the interest of several blue-chip recruits. Hillock is a low-profile guy who admits that those recruits will now probably opt for Arizona, UCLA or the Big East schools.

“I’m not Paul Westhead,” Hillock said. “It would be stupid of me to try to emulate him.”

But he will continue to run the Westhead system--a fast-break offense and full-court press.

This was going to be the year fans found out if it was the system that made Loyola a Top 20 team, or if it was players such as Gathers and Kimble that had made the system.

Now it may be an even more intriguing angle: Does the system, once in place, work with a different coach at the controls?

After saying goodby Monday, Westhead left the team with one mission: Beat Santa Clara.

The Lions open the season against Santa Clara in the Maui Classic, then play the Broncos twice in the West Coast Conference, and could face them again in the WCC Tournament.

Junior forward John O’Connell said the Lions consider Santa Clara more of a bitter rival than Pepperdine. “The best tribute we could pay (Westhead) is to knock ‘em off four times,” O’Connell said.

Hillock didn’t get much sleep Sunday night preparing for Monday’s press conference announcing that he would replace Westhead as coach. One of the distractions that kept Hillock awake was a long phone conversation with his mentor, Gonzaga Coach and Athletic Director Dan Fitzgerald.

Hillock’s ties to Gonzaga run deep. Younger brother Joe is the top assistant coach there, and Hillock and Fitzgerald talk frequently. For Hillock, that means some missed sleep. Fitzgerald is one of those people who function on a few hours of sleep, and he’s liable to call at 2 or 3 a.m.

“I talked to Fitz late Sunday,” Hillock said. “He was really happy for me. He said there’s only two days a year we’ll not be able to speak.” That is Feb. 7 and Feb. 16, when Gonzaga and Loyola play each other.

Loyola Marymount baseball standout Tim Williams, who suffered an eye injury in a drive-by shooting incident last weekend while riding in a car with teammates Darren Sugiyama and Todd Gates, on how close a call it was: “This car got behind us, tailgated us for about a half-mile. I was sitting in the back seat. Darren switched lanes (to let the car pass) and for some reason I slid over. They pulled up, then a shotgun appeared and blasted through the side window where I’d been sitting. If I hadn’t slid over, I probably would’ve been killed.”

Williams wasn’t hit by the shotgun pellets, but glass from the window went into his right eye and he had the lens removed surgically early Sunday morning. The lens can be replaced as an implant after some healing and Williams expects to return to baseball.

Williams on a scary 24 hours at Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital: “In the emergency room all I could say was, ‘Am I gonna lose my eye?’ They said there’s a chance. But when I went into surgery, losing the eye seemed secondary to getting rid of the pain.

“I woke up with patches over both eyes. Coming out of anesthesia, I didn’t know where I was at. I tried to reach for my eyes and my hands were strapped down. I started yelling and screaming at everybody. They actually had to call a security guard. I was gonna try to tear those straps out. I finally calmed down. My dad spent the day with me, he was watching the football game on TV while I got the radio version. Finally I got the patches off at 5:30. I spent the whole day not knowing if I could see.”

College Notes

The Loyola Marymount women’s volleyball team, 2-1 in dual play, faces defending national champion Cal State Long Beach at 7:30 tonight in Long Beach. The Lions upset Long Beach in the Fullerton Tournament last week. . . . With Jay Hillock being promoted to head basketball coach at Loyola, Judas Prada has been promoted to top assistant and Bruce Woods to full-time assistant. Prada might join Westhead’s staff with the Denver Nuggets if a position can be worked out. . . . The Cal State Dominguez Hills women’s soccer team, ranked second in the nation in Division II, stumbled to two consecutive losses on a Northern California trip this week. The Lady Toros (2-2) face two more tough road games this weekend against Division I opponents, playing at UC Irvine at 11 a.m. Saturday and at UC Santa Barbara at 4 p.m. Sunday. . . . The Dominguez Hills women’s volleyball team plays in the LaVerne Tournament today and Saturday. . . . Former Loyola water polo Coach Jim McMillan has been hired as assistant coach to Terry Schroeder at perennial national title contender Pepperdine. McMillan played for the Waves in 1983 and ’84.